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Language: Interview with Gregory Radick | Darwin Correspondence Project

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Gregory Radick, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Leeds University, talks about the importance of the development of language to Darwin, what Darwin&#039;s letters tell us about his thinking, and assesses Darwin&#039;s impact on later study." /> <meta name="generator" content="Drupal 7 (https://www.drupal.org)" /> <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/commentary/human-nature/origin-language/language-interview-gregory-radick" /> <link rel="shortlink" href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/node/151" /> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Darwin Correspondence Project" /> <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> <meta property="og:url" content="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/commentary/human-nature/origin-language/language-interview-gregory-radick" /> <meta property="og:title" content="Language: Interview with Gregory Radick" /> <meta property="og:description" content="Darwin made a famous comment about parallels between changes in language and species change. 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id="breadcrumb" itemtype="https://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb"> <ul class="campl-unstyled-list campl-horizontal-navigation clearfix"> <li class="first-child"><span itemprop="title"><a href="/" class="easy-breadcrumb_segment easy-breadcrumb_segment-front campl-home ir">Home</a></span></li> <li><span itemprop="title"><a href="/commentary" class="easy-breadcrumb_segment easy-breadcrumb_segment-1">Commentary</a></span></li> <li><span itemprop="title"><a href="/commentary/human-nature" class="easy-breadcrumb_segment easy-breadcrumb_segment-2">Human nature</a></span></li> <li><span itemprop="title"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/origin-language" class="easy-breadcrumb_segment easy-breadcrumb_segment-3">The origin of language</a></span></li> <li><span class="easy-breadcrumb_segment easy-breadcrumb_segment-title" itemprop="title">Language: Interview with Gregory Radick</span></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> <h1 class="campl-page-title">Darwin Correspondence Project</h1> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="campl-row campl-page-header"> <div class="campl-wrap"> <div class="region region-horizontal-navigation"> <div id="block-menu-block-1" class="block block-menu-block"> <div> <div class="menu-block-wrapper menu-block-1 menu-name-main-menu parent-mlid-0 menu-level-1"> <div class="campl-wrap clearfix campl-local-navigation"><div class="campl-local-navigation-container"><ul class="campl-unstyled-list"><li class="first leaf menu-mlid-198"><a href="/">Home</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-2309"><a href="/about-darwin">About Darwin</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2309"><a href="/about-darwin">About Darwin overview</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-869"><a href="/people/about-darwin/family-life">Family life</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-869"><a href="/people/about-darwin/family-life">Family life overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1125"><a href="/people/about-darwin/family-life/darwin-childhood">Darwin on childhood</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1038"><a href="/tags/about-darwin/family-life/darwin-marriage">Darwin on marriage</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1258"><a href="/people/about-darwin/family-life/darwin-s-observations-his-children">Darwin’s observations on his children</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2295"><a href="/people/about-darwin/family-life/darwin-and-fatherhood">Darwin and fatherhood</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1039"><a href="/people/about-darwin/family-life/death-anne-elizabeth-darwin">The death of Annie Darwin</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-1051"><a href="/people/about-darwin/family-life/visiting-darwins">Visiting the Darwins</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3416"><a href="/commentary/voyage-hms-beagle" title="">Voyage of HMS Beagle</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1035"><a href="/people/about-darwin/what-darwin-read">What Darwin read</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1035"><a href="/people/about-darwin/what-darwin-read">What Darwin read overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1130"><a href="/people/about-darwin/what-darwin-read/darwin-s-student-booklist">Darwin’s student booklist</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-933"><a href="/people/about-darwin/what-darwin-read/books-beagle">Books on the Beagle</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-1036"><a href="/people/about-darwin/what-darwin-read/darwin-s-reading-notebooks">Darwin’s reading notebooks</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1059"><a href="/about-darwin/origin-species">On the Origin of Species</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1059"><a href="/about-darwin/origin-species">On the Origin of Species overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1060"><a href="/people/about-darwin/origin-species/writing-origin">The writing of &quot;Origin&quot;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1084"><a href="/people/about-darwin/origin-species/abstract-darwin-s-theory">Abstract of Darwin’s theory</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1093"><a href="/people/about-darwin/origin-species/alfred-russel-wallace-s-essay-varieties">Alfred Russel Wallace’s essay on varieties</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1094"><a href="/charles-darwin-and-his-publisher">Charles Darwin and his publisher</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-1147"><a href="/people/about-darwin/origin-species/review-origin-species">Review: The Origin of Species</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1126"><a href="/people/about-darwin/darwins-health">Darwin’s health</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first last leaf menu-mlid-2917"><a href="/tags/darwin/darwin-on-his-health">Darwin&#039;s notes for his physician, 1865</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1128"><a href="/about-darwin/darwin-s-photographic-portraits">Darwin’s photographic portraits</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2896"><a href="/have-you-read-one-about">Have you read the one about....</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-2654"><a href="/people/about-darwin/six-things-darwin-never-said">Six things Darwin never said – and one he did</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2654"><a href="/people/about-darwin/six-things-darwin-never-said">Six things Darwin never said – and one he did overview</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-2892"><a href="/people/about-darwin/six-things-darwin-never-said/evolution-misquotation">The evolution of a misquotation</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-3673"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue">Portraits of Charles Darwin: a catalogue</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-3673"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue">Portraits of Charles Darwin: a catalogue overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3676"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/11-ellen-sharples-pastel">1.1 Ellen Sharples pastel</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3709"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/12-george-richmond-marriage-portrait">1.2 George Richmond, marriage portrait</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3718"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/13-thomas-herbert-maguire-lithograph">1.3 Thomas Herbert Maguire, lithograph</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3721"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/14-samuel-laurence-drawing-1">1.4 Samuel Laurence drawing 1</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3724"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/15-samuel-laurence-drawing-2">1.5 Samuel Laurence drawing 2</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3727"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/16-ouless-oil-portrait">1.6 Ouless oil portrait</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3730"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/17-ouless-replica">1.7 Ouless replica</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3733"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/18-anonymous-drawing-after-ouless">1.8 anonymous drawing, after Ouless</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3736"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/19-rajon-etching-after-ouless">1.9 Rajon, etching after Ouless</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3679"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/110-rajon-etching-variant-state">1.10 Rajon etching, variant state</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3682"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/111-laura-russell-oil">1.11 Laura Russell, oil</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3685"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/112-marian-huxley-drawing">1.12 Marian Huxley, drawing</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3688"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/113-louisa-nash-drawing">1.13 Louisa Nash, drawing</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3691"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/114-william-richmond-oil">1.14 William Richmond, oil</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3694"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/115-albert-goodwin-watercolour">1.15 Albert Goodwin, watercolour</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3697"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/116-alphonse-legros-drypoint">1.16 Alphonse Legros, drypoint</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3700"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/117-alphonse-legros-drawing">1.17 Alphonse Legros drawing</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3703"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/118-john-collier-oil-linnean">1.18 John Collier, oil in Linnean</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3706"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/119-john-collier-oil-npg">1.19 John Collier, oil in NPG</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3712"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/120-leopold-flameng-etching-after-collier">1.20 Leopold Flameng etching, after Collier</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3715"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/121-window-christs-college-cambridge">1.21 window at Christ&#039;s College Cambridge</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3739"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/21-thomas-woolner-bust">2.1 Thomas Woolner bust</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3772"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/22-thomas-woolner-metal-plaque">2.2 Thomas Woolner metal plaque</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3802"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/23-wedgwood-medallions">2.3 Wedgwood medallions</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3805"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/24-wedgwood-plaque">2.4 Wedgwood plaque</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3808"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/25-wedgwood-medallions-2nd-type">2.5 Wedgwood medallions, 2nd type</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3811"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/26-adolf-von-hildebrand-bust">2.6 Adolf von Hildebrand bust</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3814"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/27-joseph-moore-midland-union-medal">2.7 Joseph Moore, Midland Union medal</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3817"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/28-alphonse-legros-medallion">2.8 Alphonse Legros medallion</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3820"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/29-legros-medallion-plaster-model">2.9 Legros medallion, plaster model</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3742"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/210-moritz-klinkicht-print-legros">2.10 Moritz Klinkicht, print from Legros</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3745"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/211-christian-lehr-plaster-bust">2.11 Christian Lehr, plaster bust</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3748"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/212-allan-wyon-royal-society-medal">2.12 Allan Wyon, Royal Society medal</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3751"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/213-edgar-boehm-statue-nhm">2.13 Edgar Boehm, statue in the NHM</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3754"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/214-boehm-westminster-abbey-roundel">2.14 Boehm, Westminster Abbey roundel</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3757"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/215-boehm-terracotta-bust-npg">2.15 Boehm terracotta bust (NPG)</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3760"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/216-horace-montford-statue-shrewsbury">2.16 Horace Montford statue, Shrewsbury</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3763"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/217-montford-statuette">2.17 Montford, statuette</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3766"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/218-montford-carnegie-bust">2.18 Montford, Carnegie bust</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3769"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/219-montford-bust-royal-society">2.19 Montford, bust at the Royal Society</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3775"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/220-montford-terracotta-bust-npg">2.20 Montford, terracotta bust, NPG</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3778"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/221-montford-relief-christs-college">2.21 Montford, relief at Christ&#039;s College</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3781"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/222-l-j-chavalliaud-statue-liverpool">2.22 L.-J. Chavalliaud statue in Liverpool</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3784"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/223-hope-pinker-statue-oxford-museum">2.23 Hope Pinker statue, Oxford Museum</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3787"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/224-herbert-hampton-statue-lancaster">2.24 Herbert Hampton statue, Lancaster</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3790"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/225-henry-pegram-statue-birmingham">2.25 Henry Pegram statue, Birmingham</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3793"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/226-linnean-society-medal">2.26 Linnean Society medal</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3796"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/227-william-couper-bust-new-york">2.27 William Couper bust, New York</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3799"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/228-couper-bust-cambridge">2.28 Couper bust in Cambridge</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3823"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/31-antoine-claudet-daguerreotype">3.1 Antoine Claudet, daguerreotype</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3856"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/32-maull-and-polyblank-photo-1">3.2 Maull and Polyblank photo 1</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3865"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/33-maull-and-polyblank-photo-2">3.3 Maull and Polyblank photo 2</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3868"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/34-william-darwin-photo-1">3.4 William Darwin, photo 1</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3871"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/35-william-darwin-photo-2">3.5 William Darwin, photo 2</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3874"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/36-william-darwin-photo-3">3.6 William Darwin, photo 3</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3877"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/37-leonard-darwin-photo-verandah">3.7 Leonard Darwin, photo on verandah</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3880"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/38-leonard-darwin-interior-photo">3.8 Leonard Darwin, interior photo</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3883"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/39-leonard-darwin-photo-horseback">3.9 Leonard Darwin, photo on horseback</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3826"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/310-ernest-edwards-men-eminence">3.10 Ernest Edwards, &#039;Men of Eminence&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3829"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/311-edwards-illustrated-london-news">3.11 Edwards, in Illustrated London News</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3832"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/312-edwards-second-group-photos">3.12 Edwards, second group of photos</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3835"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/313-edwards-representative-men">3.13 Edwards &#039;Representative Men&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3838"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/314-julia-margaret-cameron-photos">3.14 Julia Margaret Cameron, photos</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3841"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/315-george-charles-wallich-photo">3.15 George Charles Wallich, photo</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3844"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/316-oscar-rejlander-photos">3.16 Oscar Rejlander, photos</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3847"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/317-lock-and-whitfield-men-mark">3.17 Lock and Whitfield, &#039;Men of Mark&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3850"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/318-elliott-and-fry-photos-c1869-1871">3.18 Elliott and Fry photos, c.1869-1871</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3853"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/319-elliott-and-fry-photos-c1880-1">3.19 Elliott and Fry photos c.1880-1</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3859"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/320-elliott-and-fry-c1880-1-verandah">3.20 Elliott and Fry, c.1880-1, verandah</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3862"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/321-herbert-rose-barraud-photos">3.21 Herbert Rose Barraud, photos</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3886"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/41-albert-way-comic-drawings">4.1 Albert Way, comic drawings</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3919"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/42-augustus-earle-caricature-drawing">4.2 Augustus Earle, caricature drawing</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3952"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/43-alfred-crowquill-caricature">4.3 Alfred Crowquill, caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3985"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/44-thomas-huxley-caricature-sketch">4.4 Thomas Huxley, caricature sketch</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4018"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/45-william-beard-comic-painting">4.5 William Beard, comic painting</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4051"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/46-thomas-nast-cartoon">4.6 Thomas Nast, cartoon</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4054"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/47-vanity-fair-caricature">4.7 &#039;Vanity Fair&#039;, caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4057"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/48-vanity-fair-preliminary-study">4.8 &#039;Vanity Fair&#039;, preliminary study</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4060"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/49-graphic-cartoon">4.9 &#039;Graphic&#039;, cartoon</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3889"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/410-hornet-caricature-darwin">4.10 &#039;Hornet&#039; caricature of Darwin</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3892"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/411-fun-cartoon-little-lecture">4.11 &#039;Fun&#039; cartoon, &#039;A little lecture&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3895"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/412-fun-wedding-procession">4.12 &#039;Fun&#039;, Wedding procession</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3898"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/413-fun-cartoon-griset-emotional">4.13 &#039;Fun&#039; cartoon by Griset, &#039;Emotional&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3901"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/414-fun-cartoon-troubles">4.14 &#039;Fun&#039; cartoon, &#039;That troubles&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3904"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/415-george-cruikshank-comic-drawing">4.15 George Cruikshank, comic drawing</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3907"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/416-joseph-simms-physiognomy">4.16 Joseph Simms, physiognomy</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3910"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/417-figaro-unidentifiable-1871">4.17 &#039;Figaro&#039;, unidentifiable 1871</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3913"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/418-figaro-chromolithograph-1">4.18 &#039;Figaro&#039; chromolithograph 1</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3916"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/419-george-montbard-caricature">4.19 George Montbard, caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3922"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/420-frederick-waddy-caricature">4.20 Frederick Waddy, caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3925"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/421-gegeef-our-national-church-1">4.21 Gegeef, &#039;Our National Church&#039;, 1</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3928"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/422-gegeef-et-al-our-national-church-2">4.22 Gegeef et al., &#039;Our National Church&#039;, 2</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3931"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/423-gegeef-battle-field-science">4.23 Gegeef, &#039;Battle Field of Science&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3934"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/424-daily-graphic-nast-satire">4.24 &#039;Daily Graphic&#039;, Nast satire</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3937"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/425-punch-1877-re-cambridge-doctorate">4.25 &#039;Punch&#039; 1877 re. Cambridge doctorate</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3940"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/426-christmas-card-caricature-monkeys">4.26 Christmas card caricature, monkeys</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3943"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/427-four-founders-darwinismus">4.27 &#039;Four founders of Darwinismus&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3946"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/428-english-celebrities-montage">4.28 &#039;English celebrities&#039; montage</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3949"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/429-richard-grant-white-fall-man">4.29 Richard Grant White, &#039;Fall of man&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3955"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/430-la-petite-lune-gill-cartoon">4.30 &#039;La Petite Lune&#039;, Gill cartoon</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3958"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/431-la-lune-rousse-gill-cartoon">4.31 &#039;La Lune Rousse&#039;, Gill cartoon</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3961"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/432-anis-liqueur-label">4.32 Anis liqueur label</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3964"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/433-harpers-weekly-bellew-caricature">4.33 &#039;Harper&#039;s Weekly&#039;, Bellew caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3967"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/434-punch-sambourne-cartoon-1">4.34 &#039;Punch&#039;, Sambourne cartoon 1</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3970"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/435-frederick-sem-caricature">4.35 Frederick Sem, caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3973"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/436-sem-chistmas-card">4.36 Sem, Chistmas card</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3976"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/437-mosquito-satire">4.37 &#039;Mosquito&#039; satire</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3979"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/438-franz-goedecker-caricature">4.38 Franz Goedecker, caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3982"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/439-moonshine-magazine-cartoon">4.39 &#039;Moonshine&#039; magazine cartoon</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3988"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/440-phrenological-magazine">4.40 &#039;Phrenological Magazine&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3991"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/441-punch-sambourne-cartoon-2">4.41 &#039;Punch&#039;, Sambourne cartoon 2</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3994"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/442-punch-sambourne-cartoon-3">4.42 &#039;Punch&#039; Sambourne cartoon 3</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3997"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/443-illustrated-london-news-article">4.43 &#039;Illustrated London News&#039; article</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4000"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/444-puck-cartoon-1">4.44 &#039;Puck&#039; cartoon 1</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4003"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/445-puck-cartoon-2">4.45 &#039;Puck&#039; cartoon 2</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4006"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/446-puck-cartoon-3">4.46 &#039;Puck&#039; cartoon 3</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4009"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/447-puck-cartoon-4">4.47 &#039;Puck&#039; cartoon 4</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4012"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/448-puck-cartoon-5">4.48 &#039;Puck&#039;, cartoon 5</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4015"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/449-alfred-bryan-caricature">4.49 Alfred Bryan, caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4021"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/450-cigar-box-lid-design">4.50 Cigar box lid design</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4024"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/451-frederick-holder-life-and-work">4.51 Frederick Holder &#039;Life and Work&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4027"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/452-wasp-caricature">4.52 &#039;Wasp&#039; caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4030"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/453-claud-warren-outlines-hands">4.53 Claud Warren, &#039;Outlines of Hands&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4033"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/454-jubilees-queen-victoria">4.54 jubilees of Queen Victoria</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4036"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/455-harry-furniss-caricature">4.55 Harry Furniss caricature</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4039"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/456-larks-cartoon">4.56 &#039;Larks&#039; cartoon</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4042"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/457-silhouette-cartoon">4.57 silhouette cartoon</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4045"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/458-simian-savage-drawings">4.58 &#039;Simian, savage&#039; . . . drawings</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-4048"><a href="/about-darwin/portraits-charles-darwin-catalogue/459-simplicissimus-cartoon">4.59 &#039;Simplicissimus&#039; cartoon</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-4066"><a href="/about-darwin/darwin-and-experimental-life">Darwin and the experimental life</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-4066"><a href="/about-darwin/darwin-and-experimental-life">Darwin and the experimental life overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4069"><a href="/about-darwin/darwin-and-experimental-life/what-experiment">What is an experiment?</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4081"><a href="/about-darwin/darwin-and-experimental-life/morphology-movement-observation-and-experiment">From morphology to movement: observation and experiment</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4078"><a href="/about-darwin/darwin-and-experimental-life/fools-experiments">Fool&#039;s experiments</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4075"><a href="/about-darwin/darwin-and-experimental-life/experimenting-emotions">Experimenting with emotions</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-4072"><a href="/about-darwin/darwin-and-experimental-life/animals-ethics-and-progress-science">Animals, ethics, and the progress of science</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3366"><a href="/fake-darwin">Fake Darwin: myths and misconceptions</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3402"><a href="/darwins-bad-days">Darwin&#039;s bad days</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3644"><a href="/people/about-darwin/darwin-s-first-love">Darwin’s first love</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-800"><a href="/letters" title="">The letters</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-800"><a href="/letters" title="">The letters overview</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-2080"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters">Darwin&#039;s life in letters</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2080"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters">Darwin&#039;s life in letters overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1097"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1821-1836-childhood-beagle-voyage">1821-1836: Childhood to the Beagle voyage</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1106"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1837-1843-london-years-natural-selection" title="Charles Darwin&#039;s life seen through his letters, 1837-43">1837-43: The London years to &#039;natural selection&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1107"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1844-1846-building-scientific-network">1844-1846: Building a scientific network</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1108"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1847-1850-microscopes-and-barnacles">1847-1850: Microscopes and barnacles</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1109"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1851-1855-death-daughter">1851-1855: Death of a daughter</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1110"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1856-1857-big-book">1856-1857: The &#039;Big Book&#039;</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-936"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1858-1859-origin">1858-1859: Origin</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-937"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1860-answering-critics">1860: Answering critics</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1111"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1861-gaining-allies">1861: Gaining allies</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1098"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1862-multiplicity-experiments">1862: A multiplicity of experiments</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1099"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1863-quarrels-home-honours-abroad">1863: Quarrels at home, honours abroad</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1100"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1864-failing-health">1864: Failing health</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-935"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1865-delays-and-disappointments">1865: Delays and disappointments</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1101"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters1866-survival-fittest">1866: Survival of the fittest</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1102"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1867-civilised-dispute">1867: A civilised dispute</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1103"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1868-studying-sex">1868: Studying sex</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1104"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1869-forward-all-fronts">1869: Forward on all fronts</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1105"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters1870-human-evolution">1870: Human evolution</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1151"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1871-emptying-nest">1871: An emptying nest</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1152"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1872-job-done">1872: Job done?</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1049"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwins-letters-1873-animal-or-vegetable">1873: Animal or vegetable?</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1050"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1874-turbulent-year">1874: A turbulent year</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2275"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1875-pulling-strings">1875: Pulling strings</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2894"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1876-midst-life">1876: In the midst of life</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3363"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1877-flowers-and-honours">1877: Flowers and honours</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3383"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1878-movement-and-sleep">1878: Movement and sleep</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3394"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1879-tracing-roots">1879: Tracing roots</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3661"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1880-sensitivity-and-worms">1880: Sensitivity and worms</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4063"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1881-old-friends-and-new-admirers">1881: Old friends and new admirers</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-4102"><a href="/letters/darwins-life-letters/darwin-letters-1882-nothing-too-great-or-too-small">1882: Nothing too great or too small</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-3384"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters">Darwin&#039;s works in letters</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-3384"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters">Darwin&#039;s works in letters overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3385"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/journal-researches">Journal of researches</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3386"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/living-and-fossil-cirripedia">Living and fossil cirripedia</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-3400"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/origin-big-book">Before Origin: the ‘big book’</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-3400"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/origin-big-book">Before Origin: the ‘big book’ overview</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3401"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/origin-big-book/dates-composition-darwins-manuscript-species">Dates of composition of Darwin&#039;s manuscript on species</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3406"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/origin">Origin</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-3407"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/rewriting-origin-later-editions">Rewriting Origin - the later editions</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-3407"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/rewriting-origin-later-editions">Rewriting Origin - the later editions overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3412"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/rewriting-origin-later-editions/how-old-earth">How old is the earth?</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3411"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/rewriting-origin-later-editions/whale-bear">The whale-bear</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3413"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/rewriting-origin-later-editions/origin-lost-changes-second-german">Origin: the lost changes for the second German edition</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3404"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/orchids">Orchids</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3662"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/climbing-plants">Climbing plants</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3387"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/descent">Descent</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3388"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/expression">Expression</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3389"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/insectivorous-plants">Insectivorous plants</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3663"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/forms-flowers">Forms of flowers</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4084"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/cross-and-self-fertilisation">Cross and self fertilisation</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3405"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/life-erasmus-darwin">Life of Erasmus Darwin</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3665"><a href="/letters/darwins-works-letters/movement-plants">Movement in Plants</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2264"><a href="/letters/about-letters">About the letters</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-2408"><a href="/letters/lifecycle-letter-film">Lifecycle of a letter film</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2408"><a href="/letters/lifecycle-letter-film">Lifecycle of a letter film overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2411"><a href="/letters/lifecycle-letter-film/editing-letter">Editing a Letter</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-2409"><a href="/letters/lifecycle-letter-film/working-darwin-archive">Working in the Darwin archive</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2296"><a href="/letters/capturing-darwin-s-voice-audio-selected-letters">Capturing Darwin’s voice: audio of selected letters</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2266"><a href="/letters/correspondence-women">Correspondence with women</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-878"><a href="/hunt-new-letters">The hunt for new letters</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1136"><a href="/letters/editorial-policy-and-practice">Editorial policy and practice</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1136"><a href="/letters/editorial-policy-and-practice">Editorial policy and practice overview</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3646"><a href="/letters/editorial-policy-and-practice/full-notes-editorial-policy">Full notes on editorial policy</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2263"><a href="/letters/symbols-and-abbreviations">Symbols and abbreviations</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2905"><a href="/letters/darwins-letters-timeline">Darwin&#039;s letters: a timeline</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2909"><a href="/world-map">Darwin&#039;s letters: World Map</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3364"><a href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/have-you-read-one-about" title="">Have you read the one about...</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4183"><a href="/letters/charles-darwin-life-letters">Charles Darwin: A Life in Letters</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4158"><a href="/darwin-conversation-exhibition">Darwin in Conversation exhibition</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4099"><a href="/letters/diagrams-and-drawings-letters">Diagrams and drawings in letters</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-4105"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters">Favourite Letters</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-4105"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters">Favourite Letters overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4162"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/be-envious-ripe-oranges-w-d-fox-may-1832">Be envious of ripe oranges: To W. D. Fox, May 1832</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4111"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/monstrous-stain-j-m-herbert-2-june-1833">That monstrous stain: To J. M. Herbert, 2 June 1833</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4166"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/my-most-solemn-request-emma-darwin-5-july-1844">My most solemn request: To Emma Darwin, 5 July 1844</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4178"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/our-poor-dear-dear-child-emma-darwin-23-april-1851">Our poor dear dear child: To Emma Darwin, [23 April 1851]</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4174"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/i-beg-million-pardons-john-lubbock-3-september-1862">I beg a million pardons: To John Lubbock, [3 September 1862]</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4129"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/prize-possessions-henry-denny-17-january-1865">Prize possessions: To Henry Denny, 17 January [1865]</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4114"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/how-manage-it-j-d-hooker-17-june-1865">How to manage it: To J. D. Hooker, [17 June 1865]</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4117"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/fly-flower-hermann-m-ller-23-october-1867">A fly on the flower: From Hermann Müller, 23 October 1867</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4138"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/reading-my-roommate-s-illustrious-ancestor-t-h-huxley-10-june-1868">Reading my roommate’s illustrious ancestor: To T. H. Huxley, 10 June 1868</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4169"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/beginning-something-j-d-hooker-22-january-1869">A beginning, &amp; that is something: To J. D. Hooker, [22 January 1869]</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4135"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/perfect-copper-plate-hand-adolf-reuter-30-may-1869">Perfect copper-plate hand: From Adolf Reuter, 30 May 1869</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4132"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/darwin-s-favourite-photographer-o-g-rejlander-30-april-1871">Darwin’s favourite photographer: From O. G. Rejlander, 30 April 1871</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4172"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/your-letter-eternalized-us-n-d-doedes-27-march-1873">Your letter eternalized before us: From N. D. Doedes, 27 March 1873</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4120"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/lost-translation-auguste-forel-12-november-1874">Lost in translation: From Auguste Forel, 12 November 1874</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4182"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/i-never-trusted-drosera-e-f-lubbock-after-2-july-1875">I never trusted Drosera: From E. F. Lubbock, [after 2 July] 1875</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4126"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/argus-pheasant-mivart-r-wallace-17-june-1876">From Argus pheasant to Mivart: To A. R. Wallace, 17 June 1876</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4141"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/wearing-his-knowledge-lightly-fritz-m-ller-5-april-1878">Wearing his knowledge lightly: From Fritz Müller, 5 April 1878</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4123"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/terms-engagement-julius-wiesner-25-october-1881">Terms of engagement: To Julius Wiesner, 25 October 1881</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-4108"><a href="/letters/favourite-letters/intellectual-capacities-caroline-kennard-26-december-1881">Intellectual capacities: From Caroline Kennard, 26 December 1881</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-4144"><a href="/letters/darwin-plays">Darwin plays</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-4144"><a href="/letters/darwin-plays">Darwin plays overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4150"><a href="/letters/darwin-plays/emma-audio-play">&#039;Emma&#039; audio play</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4147"><a href="/letters/darwin-plays/frank-audio-play">&#039;Frank&#039; audio play</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4153"><a href="/letters/darwin-plays/confessing-murder-audio-play">&#039;Like confessing a murder&#039; audio play</a></li> <li class="last expanded menu-mlid-2294"><a href="/letters/darwin-plays/re-design-dramatisation">&#039;Re: Design&#039; dramatisation</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2294"><a href="/letters/darwin-plays/re-design-dramatisation">&#039;Re: Design&#039; dramatisation overview</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-1134"><a href="/commentary/religion/re-design-dramatisation/dramatisation-script">Dramatisation script</a></li> </ul></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3377"><a href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/search?sort=date&amp;keyword=darwin&amp;f1-document-type=letter" title="">Browse all Darwin letters in date order</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3391"><a href="/letters/list-correspondents">List of correspondents</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded active-trail menu-mlid-824"><a href="/commentary" class="active-trail campl-selected">Commentary</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed active-trail menu-mlid-824"><a href="/commentary" class="active-trail">Commentary overview</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-2269"><a href="/commentary/evolution" title="">Evolution</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2269"><a href="/commentary/evolution" title="">Evolution overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2262"><a href="/commentary/evolution/natural-selection">Natural selection</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2293"><a href="/commentary/evolution/sexual-selection">Sexual selection</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2299"><a href="/commentary/evolution/inheritance">Inheritance</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2298"><a href="/commentary/evolution/divergence">Divergence</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3410"><a href="/commentary/evolution/correlation-growth-deaf-blue-eyed-cats-pigs-and-poison">Correlation of growth: deaf blue-eyed cats, pigs, and poison</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3414"><a href="/commentary/evolution/natural-selection-trouble-terminology-part-i">Natural Selection: the trouble with terminology Part I</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3415"><a href="/commentary/evolution/survival-fittest-trouble-terminology-part-ii">Survival of the fittest: the trouble with terminology Part II</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3671"><a href="/commentary/evolution/darwin-s-species-notebooks-i-think">Darwin’s species notebooks: ‘I think . . .’</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-871"><a href="/commentary/geology" title="">Geology</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-871"><a href="/commentary/geology" title="">Geology overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2259"><a href="/commentary/geology/darwin-geology">Darwin and geology</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1127"><a href="/topics/geology/darwin-s-introduction-geology">Darwin’s introduction to geology</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1270"><a href="/commentary/geology/geology-beagle-voyage">The geology of the Beagle voyage</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1122"><a href="/commentary/geology/darwin-coral-reefs">Darwin and coral reefs</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2258"><a href="/commentary/geology/darwin-s-earthquakes">Darwin’s earthquakes</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2257"><a href="/topics/geology/darwin-geological-society" title="">Darwin and the Geological Society</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1123"><a href="/commentary/geology/darwin-glen-roy">Darwin and Glen Roy</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-1087"><a href="/topics/geology/bibliography-darwin-s-geological-publications">Bibliography of Darwin’s geological publications</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-2247"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences" title="">Life sciences</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2247"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences" title="">Life sciences overview</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1117"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/darwin-and-down">Darwin and Down</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1117"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/darwin-and-down">Darwin and Down overview</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-1149"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/darwin-and-down/darwin-s-hothouse-and-lists-hothouse-plants">Darwin’s hothouse and lists of hothouse plants</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4087"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/species-and-varieties">Species and varieties</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1058"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/evolution-honeycomb">The evolution of honeycomb</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1083"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/tale-two-bees">A tale of two bees</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1088"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/beauty-and-seed">Beauty and the seed</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1088"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/beauty-and-seed">Beauty and the seed overview</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-1055"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/beauty-and-seed/mauro-galetti-profile-ecologist">Mauro Galetti: profile of an ecologist</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2261"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/casting-about-darwin-worms">Casting about: Darwin on worms</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1081"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/was-darwin-ecologist">Was Darwin an ecologist?</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3641"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/dipsacus-and-drosera-frank-s-favourite-carnivores">Dipsacus and Drosera</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-2318"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/darwin-and-barnacles">Darwin and barnacles</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2318"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/darwin-and-barnacles">Darwin and barnacles overview</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-2317"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/darwin-and-barnacles/darwin-s-study-cirripedia">Darwin’s study of the Cirripedia</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-2280"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/darwin-and-vivisection">Darwin and vivisection</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2280"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/darwin-and-vivisection">Darwin and vivisection overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2284"><a href="/topics/life-sciences/darwin-and-vivisection/vivisection-draft-petition">Vivisection: draft petition</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2285"><a href="/topics/life-sciences/darwin-and-vivisection/vivisection-baas-committee-report">Vivisection: BAAS committee report</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2286"><a href="/topics/life-sciences/darwin-and-vivisection/vivisection-first-sketch-bill">Vivisection: first sketch of the bill</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2287"><a href="/topics/life-sciences/darwin-and-vivisection/vivisection-darwins-testimony-royal-commission">Vivisection: Darwin&#039;s testimony</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-2288"><a href="/topics/life-sciences/darwin-and-vivisection/appeal-against-animal-cruelty">&#039;An Appeal&#039; against animal cruelty</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-2916"><a href="/commentary/life-sciences/biodiversity-and-its-histories">Biodiversity and its histories</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded active-trail menu-mlid-873"><a href="/commentary/human-nature" title="" class="active-trail">Human nature</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed active-trail menu-mlid-873"><a href="/commentary/human-nature" title="" class="active-trail">Human nature overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2604"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/darwin-human-evolution">Darwin on human evolution</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1269"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/expression-emotions">The expression of emotions</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1269"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/expression-emotions">The expression of emotions overview</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1262"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/expression-emotions/emotion-experiment">Emotion experiment</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1262"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/expression-emotions/emotion-experiment">Emotion experiment overview</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-1263"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/expression-emotions/emotion-experiment/results-darwin-online-emotions">Results of the Darwin Online Emotions Experiment</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2256"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/expression-emotions/face-emotion">Face of emotion</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-2292"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/expression-emotions/darwin-s-queries-expression">Darwin’s queries on expression</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded active-trail menu-mlid-1052"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/origin-language" class="active-trail">The origin of language</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed active-trail menu-mlid-1052"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/origin-language" class="active-trail">The origin of language overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1053"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/origin-language/language-key-letters">Language: key letters</a></li> <li class="last leaf active-trail active menu-mlid-1153 campl-current-page"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/origin-language/language-interview-gregory-radick" class="active-trail active">Language: Interview with Gregory Radick</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-1140"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/darwin-and-human-nature-film-series">Film series podcasts</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-874"><a href="/commentary/religion" title="">Religion</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-874"><a href="/commentary/religion" title="">Religion overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1033"><a href="/commentary/religion/darwin-and-design">Darwin and design</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1288"><a href="/commentary/religion/what-did-darwin-believe">What did Darwin believe?</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1034"><a href="/commentary/religion/darwin-and-church">Darwin and the Church</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1089"><a href="/commentary/religion/british-association-meeting-1860">British Association meeting 1860</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1121"><a href="/commentary/religion/darwin-and-religion-america">Darwin and religion in America</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1045"><a href="/commentary/religion/essays-reviews-asa-gray">Essays and reviews by Asa Gray</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1045"><a href="/commentary/religion/essays-reviews-asa-gray">Essays and reviews by Asa Gray overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2271"><a href="/commentary/religion/essays-reviews-asa-gray/darwiniana-preface">Darwiniana – Preface</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2272"><a href="/commentary/religion/essays-reviews-asa-gray/essay-design-versus-necessity">Essay: Design versus necessity</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1046"><a href="/commentary/religion/essays-reviews-asa-gray/essay-natural-selection-natural-theology">Essay: Natural selection &amp; natural theology</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-1146"><a href="/commentary/religion/essays-reviews-asa-gray/essay-evolution-theology">Essay: Evolution and theology</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2273"><a href="/commentary/religion/essays-reviews-asa-gray/essay-what-darwinism">Essay: What is Darwinism?</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-2274"><a href="/commentary/religion/essays-reviews-asa-gray/essay-evolutionary-teleology">Essay: Evolutionary teleology</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="last expanded menu-mlid-2249"><a href="/commentary/religion/science-and-religion-interviews">Science and religion Interviews</a><ul class="menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-2249"><a href="/commentary/religion/science-and-religion-interviews">Science and religion Interviews overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2250"><a href="/commentary/religion/science-and-religion-interviews/interview-emily-ballou">Interview with Emily Ballou</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2251"><a href="/commentary/religion/science-and-religion-interviews/interview-simon-conway-morris">Interview with Simon Conway Morris</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2252"><a href="/commentary/religion/science-and-religion-interviews/interview-john-hedley-brooke">Interview with John Hedley Brooke</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2253"><a href="/commentary/religion/science-and-religion-interviews/interview-randal-keynes">Interview with Randal Keynes</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2254"><a href="/commentary/religion/science-and-religion-interviews/interview-tim-lewens">Interview with Tim Lewens</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-2255"><a href="/commentary/religion/science-and-religion-interviews/interview-pietro-corsi">Interview with Pietro Corsi</a></li> </ul></li> </ul></li> <li class="last expanded menu-mlid-3395"><a href="/commentary/curious" title="">For the curious...</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-3395"><a href="/commentary/curious" title="">For the curious... overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4155"><a href="/commentary/curious/cordillera-beagle-expedition">Cordillera Beagle expedition</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4096"><a href="/commentary/curious/darwin-family">The Darwin family</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4093"><a href="/commentary/curious/darwin-s-plant-experiments">Darwin’s plant experiments</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-4090"><a href="/commentary/curious/behind-scenes">Behind the scenes</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3664"><a href="/commentary/curious/darwin-s-networks">Darwin’s Networks</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3643"><a href="/commentary/curious/darwin-and-beagle-voyage">Darwin and the Beagle voyage</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3403"><a href="/commentary/curious/darwin-and-working-home">Darwin and working from home</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3409"><a href="/commentary/curious/darwin-cats-and-cat-shows">Darwin, cats and cat shows</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3396"><a href="/commentary/curious/darwin-and-dogs">Darwin and dogs</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3397"><a href="/commentary/curious/darwins-illness">Darwin&#039;s illness</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3398"><a href="/commentary/curious/plant-or-animal-or-don-t-try-home">Plant or animal? (Or: Don’t try this at home!)</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3399"><a href="/commentary/curious/strange-things-sent-darwin-post">Strange things sent to Darwin in the post</a></li> </ul></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-823"><a href="/people">People</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-823"><a href="/people">People overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2150"><a href="/commentary/key-correspondents" title="">Key correspondents</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2153"><a href="/commentary/beagle-voyage-networks" title="">Beagle voyage networks</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2152"><a href="/commentary/family-and-friends" title="">Family and friends</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2159"><a href="/commentary/darwins-scientific-network" title="">Darwin&#039;s scientific network</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2155"><a href="/tags/readers-and-critics" title="">Readers and critics</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2162"><a href="/tags/publishers-artists-and-illustrators" title="">Publishers, artists and illustrators</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3381"><a href="/correspondents-alphabetical" title="">People pages in alphabetical order</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-3367"><a href="/people/german-and-dutch-photograph-albums">German and Dutch photograph albums</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-3367"><a href="/people/german-and-dutch-photograph-albums">German and Dutch photograph albums overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3372"><a href="/people/german-and-dutch-photograph-albums/photograph-album-german-and-austrian-scientists">Photograph album of German and Austrian scientists</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-3371"><a href="/people/german-and-dutch-photograph-albums/photograph-album-dutch-admirers">Photograph album of Dutch admirers</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3370"><a href="/german-poems-presented-darwin">German poems presented to Darwin</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3380"><a href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/search?text=%22%22;f1-document-type=people;sort=name" title="">List of all people mentioned in letters</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-825"><a href="/learning-resources" title="">Learning</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-825"><a href="/learning-resources" title="">Learning overview</a></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1739"><a href="/learning/7-11">Ages 7-11</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1739"><a href="/learning/7-11">Ages 7-11 overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2601"><a href="/learning/7-11/darwin-the-collector">Darwin The Collector</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2602"><a href="/learning/7-11/detecting-darwin">Detecting Darwin</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2603"><a href="/learning/7-11/darwin-and-evolution">Darwin And Evolution</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2600"><a href="/learning/7-11/darwins-fantastical-voyage">Darwin&#039;s Fantastical Voyage</a></li> <li class="last leaf menu-mlid-3408"><a href="/learning/7-11/home-learning-7-11-years">Home learning: 7-11 years</a></li> </ul></li> <li class="expanded menu-mlid-1744"><a href="/learning/11-14">Ages 11-14</a><ul class="campl-unstyled-list local-dropdown-menu"><li class="first collapsed menu-mlid-1744"><a href="/learning/11-14">Ages 11-14 overview</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2899"><a href="/learning/11-14/darwin-and-religion">Darwin and Religion</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2898"><a href="/learning/11-14/doing-darwins-experiments">Doing Darwin’s Experiments</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2900"><a href="/learning/11-14/how-dangerous-was-darwin">How dangerous was Darwin?</a></li> <li class="leaf menu-mlid-2901"><a 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class="block block-system"> <div> <div id="node-151" class="node node-page clearfix" about="/commentary/human-nature/origin-language/language-interview-gregory-radick" typeof="foaf:Document"> <span property="dc:title" content="Language: Interview with Gregory Radick" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="sioc:num_replies" content="0" datatype="xsd:integer" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span> <div class="content campl-content-container"> <div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div id="file-45" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg"> <h2 class="element-invisible"><a href="/file/picture-greg-radickjpg">Picture-Greg-Radick.jpg</a></h2> <div class="content"> <a href="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Picture-Greg-Radick.jpg"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="campl-scale-with-grid" src="https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Picture-Greg-Radick.jpg" width="150" height="207" alt="" /></a> </div> </div> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Click on the audio players below each question to hear the answers from the interview.</p> <h4>&nbsp;</h4> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>1. According to Darwin, how did language begin?</h4> <p><iframe frameborder="no" height="20" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/242109449&amp;color=ff5500&amp;inverse=false&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_user=false" width="100%"></iframe></p> <h4>2. Was this an important topic for Darwin? And if so, why?</h4> <p><iframe frameborder="no" height="20" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/242109448&amp;color=ff5500&amp;inverse=false&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_user=false" width="100%"></iframe></p> <h4>3. Darwin made a famous comment about parallels between changes in language and species change. Could you tell us a bit more about that?</h4> <p><iframe frameborder="no" height="20" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/242109447&amp;color=ff5500&amp;inverse=false&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_user=false" width="100%"></iframe></p> <h4>4. How did you use Darwin’s correspondence to re-evaluate his views of the Fuegians and Fuegian language?</h4> <p><iframe frameborder="no" height="20" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/242109446&amp;color=ff5500&amp;inverse=false&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_user=false" width="100%"></iframe></p> <h4>5. What is the impact of Darwin’s writings on the study of language? What were the responses to Darwin’s research after his death?</h4> <p><iframe frameborder="no" height="20" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/242109443&amp;color=ff5500&amp;inverse=false&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_user=false" width="100%"></iframe></p> <h3>Transcription</h3> <h4>1. According to Darwin, how did language begin?</h4> <p>Well, Darwin’s account of the evolutionary origins of language is in his book&nbsp;<em>The</em>&nbsp;<em>Descent of Man</em>, published in 1871, in which he sets out his general views on the evolutionary origins of humankind. And along the way he takes up the question of the origin of a number of what he calls mental powers, and one of these is the power of language. And the most important element in Darwin’s account of the origin of language is imitation. In general, Darwin has a massive preference for explaining the origins of something in the past in the same way in which it would arise today, by processes that we can witness right now. And this runs through his accounts of geology, runs through his views on natural selection theory, and so when it comes to language, he asks how would language begin now? And what can we see around us which shows us how that would work? And for him, as for a number of other writers at the time, it’s imitation. So, someone, as he says, some especially wise progenitor, might have wanted to talk about a predator. And so, this progenitor imitates the sound of the predator, and that sound, that imitation, becomes a sign for the predator. And in that way, a noise comes to represent something in the world through imitation, imitation of sounds in the world—so the cry of a predator, imitations of the sounds that other humans make when they’re in pain, or whatever it might be. And so through imitation signs, standing for things in the world or standing for feelings, begin to accumulate, and Darwin says these signs gave advantages in the struggle for life, and in the struggle for mates. The struggle for life, of course, matters for natural selection. So groups of humans who became able to communicate about predators that might attack them, whatever it might be, Darwin thinks had an advantage in the struggle. And the ones that got good at this, the ones that had brains which were sufficiently advanced that they could understand the signs and invent new ones, were the ones that tended to survive, and to reproduce, and to make more people who were capable of doing the same thing, even more so.</p> <p>So language begins to accumulate like that. Likewise, Darwin thinks, in the courtship competition for mates, the men who were better able to use signs in order to woo women were again going to be the ones that had more offspring, and those offspring would inherit their abilities. And so through imitation, through natural selection, and through sexual selection, language would begin to accumulate, and along with it, bigger, better functioning brains. And a very important part of Darwin’s account of the origin of language is the way it kind of drags the brain with it, and as the brain gets bigger, and better developed, humans become more intelligent. And with larger intelligence comes, Darwin thinks, so many things—the ability to think abstractly, a moral sense, a more developed moral sense, and so forth.</p> <h4>2. Was this an important topic for Darwin? And if so, why?</h4> <p>It was hugely important for Darwin, because one of his greatest opponents at the time had laid down a public marker in saying that language was what divided humankind from the beasts, and it was something that Darwinians could never explain. His name was Friedrich Max Müller He was a professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, and in 1861 he gave a series of lectures at the Royal Institution on the science of language in which he made absolutely explicit that language was the Rubicon, as he put it, and that no beast would cross it. And that Darwinians might&nbsp;<em>think</em>&nbsp;that they could explain how you go from the cries of beasts to articulate language just by natural law, just by supposing that brains got more developed and through struggle. But, Müller said, no scientific explanation worth having could ever be made for that case. Rather, the evidence of the science of language—comparative philology, as Müller represented it—showed, Müller said, that the Darwinian case was a bust, that language started in a fully conceptual, fully developed way. It leapt into being, and it leapt into being with humans. There’s a difference of kind between the communication systems of nonhuman animals, and human language.&nbsp; And so Darwin saw himself as trying to combat that, and to show that actually, one could give a very good, well-evidenced, persuasive Darwinian account of the origin of language.</p> <h4>3. Darwin made a famous comment about parallels between changes in language and species change. Could you tell us a bit more about that?</h4> <p>Well, there’s a famous passage at the end of Darwin’s discussion of the evolutionary origins of language in&nbsp;<em>The Descent of Man</em>&nbsp;in which he seems to break off, and almost&nbsp;<em>a propos</em>&nbsp;of nothing, observes, isn’t it remarkable how many parallels there are between the way in which languages change, and the way in which species change. And he goes on to list about ten of these remarkable parallels. So, for example, he says, sometimes you get similar words in different languages because these languages are themselves descended from a common ancestral language. And that’s very much like species, where you can get similar traits in different species because they are descended from a common ancestral species. And on he goes, listing about ten of these. And a question has arisen, quite what was Darwin getting up to in pointing out these apparently&nbsp;<em>a propos</em>&nbsp;of nothing parallels? And there’s a little scholarly debate, and on the one side are people who say that Darwin couldn’t resist an opportunity to review his basic principles—homology, analogy and so forth—and that he used the linguistic setting in order to drive home, using more familiar phenomena, his basic conceptual principles.&nbsp; That’s not my view: I think that’s what they do, inevitably, but I also think something more is going on there. Darwin was very concerned to defend his position on the evolutionary origin of language against creationist opponents who had said, look Darwin, isn’t it a problem for you that around the world we find (to talk their language) lowly peoples who nevertheless speak high languages? These critics went on to say, look, on a Darwinian view, on an evolutionary view, on an up from the ape view, what you expect to find are peoples in otherwise lowly circumstances with no interesting technology, no advanced civilisation, speaking lowly languages. And that as they go up the scale of civilisation in other respects, so their language will go up. But that’s not what we find, say the critics. We can find people in the most debased circumstances, who nevertheless have grammars, speak languages with grammars of the utmost perfection. Doesn’t that show, they thought, not that we’re all up from the ape, with some of us having gone further than others, but rather that we’re all&nbsp;<em>down</em>&nbsp;from a more perfect original state—down from Adam and Eve, some of us more fallen than others, but even though they had fallen so far, these savage groups, the languages still show the formerly high state.</p> <p>So Darwin’s concerned, in my view, to answer them, and his listing of the language-species parallels is a part of his answer, and it’s quite a sophisticated answer, in some ways quite a sneaky answer, because what he’s doing here, as I read him, is to show you how useful in general it is, when trying to characterise language change, to borrow from the tool kit of those who study species, from the naturalists. So having dragged you through this list of parallels, he’s then softened you up, he thinks, to accept what he really wants you to buy, which is the notion that the naturalists’ definition of perfection is the correct definition to apply when you’re talking about languages. And on the naturalists’ definition, a perfect grammar is not a highly symmetrical, simple grammar but, on the contrary, a highly asymmetrical, highly differentiated, highly complex grammar. And if that’s the case, so if we use the naturalists’ definition of what counts as perfection, it turns out there’s no problem. It turns out that these languages are as lowly as the rest of these cultures, so lowly people speak lowly languages. Now this is a surprising and uncomfortable argument for many people who like to think of themselves as fans of Charles Darwin because, of course, we don’t subscribe to anything like this view today. Linguistics has taught from the early twentieth century that all human peoples, no matter what the states of their civilisation, speak languages of more or less equal complexity, and I think there’s a fascinating story to recover of how it is that evolutionists came to change their minds about what the theory of evolution predicts, because nowadays the theory of evolution predicts exactly that, equality of languages. But that wasn’t the case for Darwin, that wasn’t how he understood his theory. And part of reading him well, I think, on these topics, is allowing for these differences between him and us, however uncomfortable.</p> <h4>4. How did you use Darwin’s correspondence to re-evaluate his views of the Fuegians and Fuegian language?</h4> <p>Well, through talks that I gave about my interest in these topics, I learned that there was a story around about how Darwin, very late in life, had changed his mind about the Fuegians—came to think that as a young man, he had underestimated just where they were in the scale—and that he got new information late in life, in particular, it was said, he was much impressed by the work of a missionary who had accumulated a large dictionary of the Fuegian language. And on seeing this, or so it was said, he came to reconsider his old views and to recant, and say that he’d got it wrong. And I went and did a little bit of study of all this, and it turns out that from the time of Darwin’s death through till now, reports have been circulating about a kind of a deathbed conversion, not quite at the deathbed, but in 1881, a letter in which Darwin wrote to a friend of his that he was amazed about the revelations of what the missionaries had done with the Fuegians, in particular what they’d uncovered about their language, and he now saw just how wrong he’d got it. So, on digging into this a little bit further, and actually looking at the letter myself, I came to see that this had all been massively overblown, and in very interesting ways. In my reading of it, Darwin, from the beginning right on through, really never changed his views about the Fuegians or their language. He thought that they were lowly, but improvable. Because for all that he saw the Fuegians as really just on the edge of the human-animal border, he nevertheless thought of them as humans, and nevertheless thought, again right from the beginning, that it was worthwhile investing in missionary efforts to help to civilise them, and Christianise them. He also, however, knew through his own experience, but also through the difficulties of others, just how hard it would be to get a missionary effort going in that part of the world with those people. So part of the surprise he was registering throughout his life was not that the Fuegians had turned out to be improvable, but that missionaries had managed to create a stable mission outpost to such an extent that they were able to do the job. He thought that was really amazing.</p> <p>He was also, in my view, being polite to a friend of his to whom he’d always been encouraging and friendly, a man named Bartholomew Sulivan who had been a mate from&nbsp;<em>Beagle</em>&nbsp;days onward. Their correspondence is always full of Darwin’s expressing amazement and pleasure at the progress that Sulivan reported with the South American missionary groups that he supported. So, partly that’s, I think, how to read this rather anodyne bit of correspondence—it’s Darwin being friendly in the way that friends often are with one another. But it’s also, I think, amazing and instructive for us now to look at the afterlife of this correspondence, the way that both scientific groups and religious groups seized on it for their own different purposes, and began to talk about this late change of mind on Darwin’s part. Among scientific groups, it was because, for their own reasons, a number of people came to think that the idea of a race-language scale, going from high to low was a mistake, and secondly, a mistake that evolutionary theory didn’t need to make. It was the wrong view of evolutionary theory, and so they tried to recruit Darwin, a later Darwin, to these revisionist efforts. And on the religious side, they were, of course, delighted to find that Darwin was cheering on the missionaries and pleased with the efforts that they had made. So, between the two of them, they’ve kept in circulation this notion of a late change of mind which I think the correspondence shows just really didn’t happen.</p> <h4>5. What is the impact of Darwin’s writings on the study of language? What were the responses to Darwin’s research after his death?</h4> <p>Darwin’s writings on language, as with so many of his other writings, it’s amazing the extent to which they’re still being read, and still being read with profit by scientifically engaged people now. Linguists can still often be amazed when they read Darwin’s pages at how insightful he was on a whole range of topics. Steven Pinker quoted Darwin on the extent to which the ability to acquire languages, as Darwin put it, a half art and half instinct—it’s a wonderful phrase and Pinker thought it couldn’t really be improved upon. His remarks on sexual selection and language have remained fruitful, and exciting to linguists, thinking both about the origin of words, but also thinking about, for example, the musical quality of our language—the way that languages, speech goes up and down, and the way that the up and down of speech is connected with our emotions. We wouldn’t necessarily buy into Darwin’s account now, but it remains something worth thinking with when we try to come up with our own theories.</p> <p>Nearer to Darwin’s own day, I don’t think that most people who were already Darwinians just subscribed to his theory. What they did do was think that there had to be a Darwinian theory out there, and there had to be evidence which would show that Darwin was ultimately right. And so what Darwin did by joining Müller on the other side of the debate over whether or not there could be an evolutionary origin for language, and whether one could trace out the connections between the nonhuman animals and their communication, and human language, Darwin energized research into this topic. And one of the most fabulous responses that he ever got, or rather his writings ever got after Darwin died, was by an amateur American businessman and schoolteacher named Richard Garner. And Garner in the 1880s had a kind of epiphany in which he saw that one could find the evidence that Darwin never had for the truth of his theory thanks to a brand-new invention—the phonograph—invented by Thomas Edison. In fact, the phonograph had been invented in the 1870s. The first models, however, weren’t a great success. In the late 1880s Edison had a new model, which was thought to be much better—he, in fact, called it the perfected phonograph. And Garner saw that one could take the phonograph to monkeys and apes in zoological gardens around the United States at that time. You could record the utterances that the animals made, and then—this is the beautiful thing—you could, under controlled circumstances, repeat the recorded utterances back to the animals and observe their responses. And in this way, Garner saw, you could work out what the utterances mean for the animals—mean in the same way that our words have meaning for us.</p> <p>And through these experiments, Garner came to conclude that monkeys have a language of their own, which was similar in degree to the human languages. Indeed, he thought that the highest apes would have a language just one step below the lowest humans. And he called this language of monkeys and apes “the simian tongue,” and he became unfeasibly famous in the early 1890s for the claims he made on the basis of these experiments in the United States, but also for plans that he had for taking the phonograph to the apes—to Africa, to West Africa, to what’s now Gabon. And Garner’s plan, which he carried out, though with mixed success, was to take his phonograph out to Africa and to sit himself in an iron cage in the jungle and there to take down onto the wax cylinders the missing links of language. And it all went wrong in the most comical and horrible ways. But that was the plan. And to my mind it shows just how exciting the debate on the evolutionary origins of language became in the latter part of the nineteenth century, such that a nobody in southwestern Virginia thought that this was an exciting way to make a contribution to a massively important public debate, and to show that Max Müller was wrong, that language was not a Rubicon that was un-crossable, and that one could use the best technology of the time to show this.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-terms field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Terms:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/commentary/human-nature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Human nature</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/audio" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">audio</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/language" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">language</a></div></div></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="campl-column3 campl-secondary-content "> <div class="region region-sidebar"> <div id="block-menu-block-3" class="block block-menu-block"> <div class="campl-content-container campl-no-bottom-padding"> <div class="campl-heading-container"> <h2>In this section:</h2> </div> </div> <div class="campl-content-container"> <div class="menu-block-wrapper menu-block-3 menu-name-main-menu parent-mlid-0 menu-level-3"> <ul class="menu"><li class="first leaf menu-mlid-1053 with-rh-icon" style="background-image:url(https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/sites/default/files/styles/rh-icon/public/MAX-MULLER-F-01-03233.jpg?itok=7HI_ZCZN)"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/origin-language/language-key-letters">Language: key letters</a></li> <li class="last leaf active-trail active menu-mlid-1153 with-rh-icon" style="background-image:url(https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/sites/default/files/styles/rh-icon/public/Picture-Greg-Radick.jpg?itok=qW9BK-I_)"><a href="/commentary/human-nature/origin-language/language-interview-gregory-radick" class="active-trail active">Language: Interview with Gregory Radick</a></li> </ul></div> </div> </div> <div id="block-views-my-sidebar-block" class="block block-views"> <div> <div class="view view-my-sidebar view-id-my_sidebar view-display-id-block view-dom-id-dd9aadad64963ef6bd79575964801143"> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last"> <div class="views-field views-field-field-side-text"> <div class="field-content"><h5>Gregory Radick is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Leeds University,&nbsp; and a Council member of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology.&nbsp;&nbsp; His book&nbsp;<em>The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language&nbsp;</em>(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007) won the History of Science Society’s Suzanne J. Levinson Prize in 2010.&nbsp; Other publications:</h5> <ul> <li><em>Darwin in Ilkley</em>. Co-authored with Mike Dixon. Stroud: History Press, 2009.</li> <li><em>The Cambridge Companion to Darwin</em>, Second Edition. Co-edited with Jonathan Hodge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.</li> <li>“Race and Language in the Darwinian Tradition (and what Darwin’s Language-Species Parallels have to do with it).”&nbsp;<em>Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences&nbsp;</em>39 (2008): 359-70.</li> </ul> <p>His particular interests include: animal mind, language and behaviour; Darwinism and its contexts; Mendelism and its rivals; the epistemology of scientific instruments; intellectual property in the sciences; the relations between genetics and eugenics; the theory and practice of counterfactual history.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div id="block-block-57" class="block block-block"> <div class="campl-content-container campl-no-bottom-padding"> <div class="campl-heading-container"> <h2>Darwin&#039;s letters: a timeline</h2> </div> </div> <div class="campl-content-container"> <p><a href="/letters/darwins-letters-timeline"><img alt="Timeline of letters to and from represented as 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